Heavy Equipment used for tree logging

Cutting trees require skills and to load the logs inside the truck is quite a challenge for the operator who does this job. While picking the log, he needs to be pretty sure that the heavy equipment has held the log tightly and there is no chance for it to lose it while the log is hanging in the air. Now this part of the job is quite a tough one because if you go wrong and for some reason the machine could not hold the log, it will fall straight on the ground and can cause harm to men or materials close to the site. Operators who do this job are specially trained and they use special kind of heavy equipment. You can’t use a construction machine for forestry work like tree logging. You can only do the job with those special machines. As we have seen an evolution in heavy equipments used for construction purposes, we have also seen a similar kind of evolution in the heavy equipments used for forestry work.

Earlier people used chainsaws which has new been replaced with modern equipment like feller bunchers, harvesters etc. These machines are usually manufactured keeping into consideration the weight of the machine and its changing area. It is crucial to keep a note of these things as the soil where the machines will function will be soft. Therefore the equipments can’t exert more pressure. There are few widely used heavy equipments without which the forestry sector could have never reached its helm.

Feller Buncher:-

A Feller Buncher is heavy equipment that is widely used for tree logging work. It has an attachment at the top of the machine through which it cuts the trees and also gathers them before they fall on the ground. It is installed with a tree grabbing equipment that holds the tree once it has been cut. Once the tree is cut, it is then put on a stack used for a skidder for further processing works.

Forwarder:-

Forwarder is heavy equipment that is used to pick the cut tree logs from the ground and place it on its back. It is more like a skeleton truck which has barriers on all the 4 sides so that the log does not fall off while the vehicle is moving on the road. It uses its arm to pick the log lying on the ground and then places it all on the truck. The only limitation is that it can’t load big logs due to size constraints and therefore while the logs are cut, one needs to ensure that they are cut as per the size that a forwarder can ferry.

Harvester:-

You can use a harvester to cut down big trees and then cut them into logs. A harvester and a forwarder are the most common heavy equipments that one can see in the forestry sector. Once the tree is cut into logs, the forwarder then picks them up and ferry it to a roadside landing.